


The Gravity of Ireland

by frenchhornbook



Category: None - Fandom
Genre: Adventure, Drinking, England (Country), F/M, France (Country), Historical, Historical References, Ireland, Love, M/M, Politics, Romance, Sex, Smoking
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-24
Updated: 2021-01-08
Packaged: 2021-03-09 18:13:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 14,738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27700525
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/frenchhornbook/pseuds/frenchhornbook
Summary: Neil escaped to the mansion when his parents died and he could no longer afford schooling. There he meets James and Adelaide, an entrenched servant family with three sons already, who find him a bed and a job. Over the years their friendship blooms as they endure trials and tribulations. The final test comes as tensions rise between Ireland and England. And let us not forget the pretty French girl...





	1. Madeleine et Neil

**Author's Note:**

> Hello everyone! I'm Frenchhornbook :) Welcome to my page and my little story. I am so excited to share this with you. This has been my brain child for a few years now, so I will be posting it chapter by chapter as I revisit and revise. Any and all feedback is welcome and greatly appreciated.

Madeleine et Neil  
They spoke English. That was all Madeleine’s mother told her before she embarked to meet her future husband, the viscount. On the night she arrived, a murky green clouded the sky. All of the count’s servants had retired for the evening in their paltry shacks behind the main estate. On this night the carriage drove to the French shore and was lifted onto a ship where its wheels were locked to the deck.  
Across the channel, Neil O’Malley lay with his best mate’s wife in his arms, watching James entertain the children with jester-like stories. Ever the dramatist, he ruffled his blond hair into a wild mane and pulled at his thin lips to make a clown’s face. Neil planted a kiss on Adelaide’s head of curls, and James feigned anger at the intimacy between his two best friends, but the boys quickly grabbed onto his arms again and he was off spinning to give them all vertigo.  
The younger boy, Liam, flew off his father’s arm and landed in the lap of his so-called Uncle Neil who immediately sprang into action, snatching the boy up under his arms and spinning him around. Tears leaked out of the small child’s green eyes that matched Neil’s as they spun around in a tizzy of black hair and grey clothing. James cut in to reclaim his son and smother him in kisses as Neil recovered from all of the spinning. He started to give his goodbyes, but James intercepted him to insist that he stay for an after dinner drink although they had already filled their bellies with plenty of beer. Adelaide rolled her eyes but reached for more bottles. She caught the glance of the younger man and offered him a drink despite her better judgment.   
Neil O'Malley was above the cuff in his intellectual development due to an incomplete, albeit formal, education. A scholarship granted after his father's death left Neil with a good head on his shoulders and a burning desire to own a farm of his own. At sixteen he set off and found his old friend James who had lived next door to him before his father died. The boy-turned-man had settled down already with this love Adelaide and was able to sneak Neil into the mansion where he started working for food and shelter without the count’s knowledge. The next year, the first count passed away and his already middle-aged son started by taking the first records of all of the servants' names.  
Neil hid his savings under the bottom seam of his mattress where the other three bunkers knew he kept it but would never steal. When he left his friends’ cottage, this was first on his mind as he wound through the tall grasses between the estates and the cliffs. Another stray figure roamed through the fields, picking her way through dirt in heels and petticoats. The night air whipped her brown hair around her face as Madeleine explored this new locale. Her carriage and driver sat asleep on the dirt path behind them as she picked her way through the same landscape that Neil traversed each day. His fingers twitched for a cigarette as he looked over the horizon. The French girl’s outline obstructed his view, but he dismissed it as a forgotten tree. They both paused to look out over to the edge where the sun sank each day and emitted its faint rays over the lip of the cliffs. Waves crashed against the sandstone to dust the grass above with a faint coating of sea salt. The same shale that covered each of the servant’s quarters jutted out over the terrain as Madeleine caught her breath on the peaks. Neil took a glance skyward before he returned to his home.

Viscount Oliver et James  
The new count fluttered with the excitement that surrounded his son’s birthday and return home after supposedly having run off to elope with one of the servants.   
With a knock on the door, Madeleine peered around the countryside as her driver left the premises. She awaited a response with the wind whipping her aquamarine skirts while she steeled her knuckles on the handle of her trunk. The light stone of the mansion outlined her form as she waited in front of the huge oak door. The count’s seal hung above her with a soldier riding a horse outlined on the polished silver. She tried another knock with her slight little hand and felt the door unlock on its own.  
Her first glimpse left her flustered, and she missed how the inside of the mansion mimicked the outside countryside with its green wallpaper and mahogany railings as servants ran all around her. The stairs arched up from the main atrium like wings, and Madeleine did at least stop to catch the other three staircases that led to a square inner circle which radiated out in the shape of a diamond. Behind these grand staircases with carpet runners to match the wallpaper, Neil ran to a rickety assembly of planks that led to the servant’s kitchen. As he passed by the breakfast on the stove, he grabbed the petite shoulders of a young girl.  
“Morning, ma cherie,” he murmured as he also grabbed hands with another passerby to garner a wink and a smile.  
“Oh, Neil!”  
He chuckled and pecked the ginger on the cheek before turning to his next greeting to grasp hands and plant kisses over fluttering eyelids. James shook his head at him as he emerged from the opposite set of stairs with a stack of plates balanced on his muscled arms.  
One of Neil's frequent attentions shoved him in front of a sink to wash off his dirty face and hands and feed him stale bread to work off his hangover. The guests began to file into the room as Neil ran to his post after being thrown there jauntily by one of his admirers. Neil pulled out his father’s old flask and took a swig of whiskey and ran past Viscount Oliver who grabbed him by the elbow and shoved a newspaper into his hand. “Oi, Neil, how’re you today?”  
“Good, thanks, Oliver, and you?”  
“Still breathin’, eh?”  
“Oi, still breathin’.”  
“Stay strong, Neil,” Oliver counseled as Neil unfolded the paper.  
James lit up a cigarette by scratching a match across a wooden pillar. “What goes on in our terrible world, Neil?”  
Neil scanned the headlines, finding a mention of King Charles and his new bride. “Charles wants parliament so give him more money for his debts. They refuse. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.”  
“Always the same,” James sighed. “Cig?”  
“No thanks,” Neil muttered. “How many of these people do you think have been in love?” The teenager gestured to the guests making their way down to the breakfast table and their brethren who evacuated the guest rooms above them.  
“Zero,” James replied, extinguishing the butt of his cigarette with his fingers and falling down to the ground gracefully out of his window seat. “But then again, neither have you.”  
“Oi!” Neil objected.  
“Don't kid yourself,” James sneered. “What you have with any kitchen girl naïve enough to shack up with ya is not love, kid. You’ll be lucky to find it the way your life is going.”  
“And how is that? How is my life going, oh wise one?”  
“Glad you asked, sport. Your life is going into the money under your mattress. Your life is going to nights spent romancing my wife and playing with children that are not your own.”  
“Come off it, James.”  
The older man shook his head and shoved a pitcher of water into Neil’s hands. The liquid splashed over the edges as he sauntered off towards the dining table. A young girl in a light blue dress passed in front of him to slink into a beautifully carved chair and tore into the eggs and bacon before her. Not a stranger to hunger himself, Neil admired the similar quality in this stranger as she gulped down the water in front of her. Neighboring guests scoffed at her manners as they picked at their toast, but Neil swooped in to address this newcomer.  
“More water, Miss?” Madeline turned around with her ringlets spiraling outwards in a double helix. Neil held out the water pitcher and nearly dropped it for suddenly shaky hands.  
“Quoi?”  
“More water?” He glanced at her glass and then back at her. Her deep brown eyes pierced his greens as she puzzled over his question.  
The question proved to be too much because she turned back to the table without a second word, but Neil’s eyes stayed trained in place. No Irish lass could compare with her facial architecture, her face rivaling the magnificent fountains of Versailles. James smacked him on the shoulder to set him in motion again. Neil whispered to inquire about her name and James explained he had “no bloody idea” and that Neil “should get back to his bloody job.”  
With all of the glasses filled, he reset his system and was three chairs away from Madeleine when Adelaide dropped the platter she carted around in a fit of sobbing and sank to the floor. Everyone craned their necks, and as the gentlemen leaned over in their seats to witness the spectacle, Neil shoved his pitcher of water onto the table and darted over to where she lay crumpled on the floor with one hand covering her face and the other gripping her ribs. James glanced over in their direction from the other side of the table but remained at his post next to Oliver.  
Neil scooped Adelaide up by the elbows to cart her off to the side, muttering death threats to an immobile James as he passed him. They followed a flight of stairs upwards and he deposited her in a corner room. Her slight body felt like feathers in his hands as they leaned against an empty bed to steady her breathing. Since her pregnancy with her younger son Liam, Adelaide fell victim to fainting and spells, especially during work.  
“James… James…” she murmured in between gasps with her fingers twisted in her apron to distract herself from the panic. “Neil, where’s James?  
“Adelaide, Adelaide,” he whispered over and over again as he quietly stroked her hands away from her aprons until they rested in her lap with the remnants of tears that dripped down her face. Her head swiveled like a bird on high alert to look for her husband who was nowhere to be found. “James isn’t here...he stayed downstairs.”  
“He didn’t even come help! Did you see that? Did you see that, Neil?”  
No words could calm her at this point, so he wrapped her in his arms and let her cry all over him. The guests’ voices carried up to them from downstairs as everyone exclaimed over Oliver and how glad they were to see him on his birthday. All of the celebration translated into more work for the servants while Oliver endeavored to avoid all of his father’s friends with quick smoke breaks courtesy of James. The experienced servant stayed locked at his post with only his eyes angled towards the upstairs room where the others had disappeared.  
Her breathing slowed as Neil watched the door for intruders and hummed quietly in her ear. Adelaide stirred under his arm and pressed her back up against the bed to stand and leave. The young heartthrob scrambled to follow her, but the object of his adoration brushed him away with a shaky hand. Her drab skirts trailed after her as Adelaide reemerged in the open space of the atrium that leaked into the dining room. Neil followed at a distance until she ventured outside and he found his water pitcher next to the stranger girl from before. He glanced inside to find it empty, and she blushed with porcelain cheeks accentuated by a slight rouge that had smudged in her journey. Her plate also sat empty as she placed her knife and fork on either side of it.   
A lithe maid who spent the evening with Neil a few nights ago ducked in to serve more to this guest even with her own stomach empty. A wink from the dark-haired man satiated her enough to leave the table for the kitchen, and Madeleine chowed down on her second helping. Caught in a reverie over how much food the skinny girl could put away, Neil jolted when James steered him away from the table to clear the plates, and the men worked together to bring the remnants of breakfast to the kitchen where they might enjoy a snack themselves. When they returned with their pockets full of toast crusts and pork rinds, all of the guests had vacated the dining room. At times like these when the whole estate disguised itself as an abandoned building, you could hear your own guilty heartbeat.  
The strange semi-mute girl from before also disappeared with the hordes. As they stood on the empty dance floor, James and Neil let the silence sit between them. Even best friends have secrets. Neil could not expect James to help calm his wife when Neil was the one who brought on the spells. Casual fights and drunken confessions kept their friendship together despite their best efforts to tear it apart.  
“Well, I--”  
“I think I’ll--no, I’ll go,” James asserted with a flourish of his hand.  
“I want to check on Adelaide…” Neil admitted as he excused himself out the back door to enjoy their break between meals.


	2. Adelaide et la Mort

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Neil and James get in a fight after some untoward comments about Adelaide which leaves Neil bloody and scarred. Forced to clean the tall tower as punishment, Neil encounters the beautiful Madeleine who gives him a special surprise.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for joining me for Chapter Two! I am really enjoying the writing and editing process, so I hope you like where the story is going. Please let me know what you think in the comments!

Adelaide et la Mort  
Neil jogged off to where Adelaide had surrounded herself with her two sons in their small cabin and awaited James’s arrival that came moments after Neil had opened the door. The husband took a bottle and then handed one to his wife also and grabbed her elbow. “James, I—”  
“This is none of your business, Neil,” James retorted as he led his wife into the bedroom.  
Liam managed to ask something along the line of what happened in his little baby talk and played with the laces on Neil’s boots in awaiting a response. “Your mother is just a bit sick, boys, don’t worry.”  
Kevin looked at him sidelong with narrowed eyes and crossed his arms while leaning back with legs spread apart to support him. “There is more to it than that, is there not, Uncle Neil?”  
“Kevin... Your parents are two fully functioning adults who can fend for themselves.”  
They heard Adelaide shriek: “This week has been rough, James you know we’ve had a lot to do and it is so hard with the boys because you never come down here during the day to give them food or anything. If Oliver found out how much I suffer, he would never let me work again.”  
“And whose fault is it that you suffer? Whose fault is it that we have a second child, you whore?”  
“Do not call me that. Stop, James. They can hear you.”  
Liam looked up at Kevin with hands tugging at the ends of his pants.  
Neil shook his head and leaned back in his chair. “You need to stop observing so much and just enjoy being young, Kev. You never know when you will have to work in the house.”  
“Should be any day now,” Kevin muttered.  
“Oh, come on. Don’t say that, chap. I didn't start working here until I was sixteen and you are four years of that yet.”  
“It would help with the money and the food and maybe my parents would be able to help you more with the funds you've been collectin’ to get out of here and start your own farm. Are you really going to do it, Uncle Neil?”  
“How do you know about that? That was supposed to be a secret.” He shared a look with the young Irish boy but couldn’t stay mad at him for long with his full moon eyes and gap toothed grin. “I will be alright on my own. I always have been.” He ruffled the boy’s blond hair and hid his concern behind a smile that he directed towards the floor. “Do you trust me?”  
Kevin shrugged his broad shoulders and sat up, back straight in his chair, looking at his supposed Uncle head on. “Uncle Neil, are you shacking up with a bloke?” After such an alarming question, the young boy exhaled, and Neil fell back on the edge of his seat.  
“What? Where did you get that idea?”  
He shrugged again, smirking because he had thought that the rumor was false and could not wait to collect on his bet with another servant boy.  
“I am not that kind of person,” Neil assured him with a chuckle in his eyes that left when the other adult voices shrunk to whispers that ended with a slap; Adelaide rushed out crying to fall into Neil and wrap her arms around Kevin. The awkward moment between the two younger men, all for the sake of a bet, faded away as the youth fell into his mother’s embrace.  
James emerged, biting his inner lip to keep focused, but an attack from Neil still caught him off guard. Even at his young age, his small fist could pack a punch. And pack a punch it did. Hand connected with jaw, and Neil was just getting started. Years of fights like these that never quite resolved boiled up to the surface every time James laid a hand on Adelaide or Neil overstepped his bounds. This time it was Neil’s turn to start the argument: “What have you done, you bastard?”  
“The children! Watch your language,” Adelaide cried with her arms still around her oldest son and her skirt shielding the younger one who hid under the table and grabbed on to the legs as their father careened around the small room.  
“Go on! Get out of here! I know you love that little slut. Get her out of my house right now.” James let loose a punch on Neil, barreling him out the door as he wheeled around to tackle him to the ground and knee him in the stomach. James kicked him down with a blow to the head, but he jumped back up with blood streaking down into his eyes. He wiped it off with an already-swelling hand and charged at his best friend before Neil pinned him up against the wall and pulled out a dagger he kept hidden behind his flask. James kneed him in the side.  
“Do not treat her like that! You know that she has been through hell and she deserves better than you. You are not the only martyr here.” He cast James to the ground outside, his boots still lying within the boundaries of the door, and placed his hands on his knees to slow his breath.  
Kevin, who had been waiting in the doorway, ran out to hand his father a lit cigarette that he had been guarding against the wind. James did not so much as rub his head to thank him, but Neil stroked his cheek as he passed. He lowered himself down to the ground as James rolled onto his side to breathe in the smoke.  
“You do not need to save any money for me, James.” He shook his head and finished off the last of his flask before slipping back inside to kiss Adelaide on the top of her head and reaching around her for a bottle of beer. “I don’t need your charity.” Adelaide grabbed the hand that he had placed on her shoulder for stability and sighed as he kissed her head again and wiped a tear from her eyes. “You should come with me, Ad.”  
With redness around her eyes, she peered up at him and contorted her mouth into a smile. Even in the darkness of the cabin, he could see how blue they were with all those tears swimming around them. “No...go. You have done enough for today.”  
“If he tries to pull anything, you know where I am,” he assured her before winking at the little boy who cowered at him from under the table.

Madeleine et Neil  
The next morning Neil reported to work with slight scarring already forming on a ridge at the top of his skull where James had found purchase in his skin, but no one bothered to comment. At the staff check in, Oliver ran an index finger over the scar and pushed him back to wash the windows and mirrors in the observatory tower before his father could get down the line. “Run,” he hissed. “If he sees you’ve been a’ fightin', no amount of my kind heartedness will save ya.” The count emerged from his adjacent master bedroom as the black-haired boy sprinted in the other direction behind the row of other servants.  
The front of the mansion diverged into two white stone towers, one with the chambers and one with the observatory, both with the dark mahogany that covered the whole estate winding up in banisters. At the top of the stairs, a landing again split off to two sides to spiral upwards in a mirrored circle. Neil grabbed a polishing cloth from a closet along with a bucket filled with stagnant water to clean the many windows and heard a creak downstairs. “Hello?”  
“Hello,” came Madeleine’s response as she hiked up her Atlantis green skirts to climb the stairs to the source of the original voice. Neil peered over the edge and cursed to himself at the awful and wonderful sight of the beautiful stranger progressing towards him. If the count found one of his son’s potential suitors gallivanting around like this, he would have Neil’s head because of course he was to blame. A pesky servant boy? With a scar on his head? Definitely trying to seduce a noblewoman such as this one.  
“You are not supposed to be in here,” he warned her as he put down his cleaning supplies.  
She looked back at him quizzically and hid her hands in her sea green skirts. “Desolée, uh, je ne parle pas…”  
“Oh! You don’t speak English? Pas d’anglais?” Neil gestured wildly between them in an attempt to remember his schooling from two years ago. “You’re not supposed to be here.”  
The recognition washed over her face as she relaxed her shoulders and leaned against the mahogany railing. Neil reached out for her as she crossed her arms. “Watch out,” he whispered as his fingers grazed her elbow and tapped her away from the railing. She narrowed her eyes while keeping her mouth in a natural smile, and he gestured over to the ledge when she merely turned her head. He stopped staring at her to look back at the windows. Even the dusty glass could reflect her immense beauty as she swayed back and forth naturally between two steps. After a night’s sleep, her perfect chestnut curls lay flat against her head, and the ties on her corset loosened just enough to expose more of her decolletage than was usually appropriate. Neil looked between her double in the mirror and the piercing gaze of her dark eyes as she too rotated her head to take in the magnificent sight of the tower.  
Just as she stepped closer to him, they heard the door open again on the lower level and Neil’s eyes dropped to the floor before he grabbed Madeleine by the bony wrist and pushed her into the closet. She started to protest by shouting in French, but he plastered his hand over her mouth. She muttered a “Merci” as he retracted his palm.  
“Sorry.” He leaned towards the door to get a better listen as to what Oliver and his father were saying, and Madeleine turned her shoulder to press her ear to the crack in the door. Madeline’s brown eyes glowed in the slit of light that peeked through the door.  
“Oliver, I must go back down. I do hope these windows get cleaned soon; they are beginning to look quite dingy.”  
Neil fell out of the closet as he heard the jangle of the keys and braced himself on his knees to celebrate their close call; Madeleine sank down to the floor with her skirt up to her knees and her legs dangling over the railing Neil could see that she was not wearing any tights and had chosen a simple pair of boots without a heel. “Why are you nervous?”  
Neil shook his head and offered a hand up which she took as he led her up to the topmost circle before the telescope where the count kept his most prized mirrors.  
He held up a concave mirror for her and grabbed her by the wrist to guide her tiny hand into the slope of the mirror and then moved behind her with his arms wrapping around her to hold the mirror in front of them.  
“Do you see that?”  
“Oui,” she whispered, as her own hand seemed to reach out from the glass of the mirror to touch its own fingertips.  
“Ah, yes, now that I understand,” he whispered back as she took her hand out to hold it nicely in her lap and hang her head. “Qu’est-ce que vous faites avec ces jeux?”  
He did not understand the question, so he took out a different mirror and held it in front of her face. “It’s so small,” she whispered, peering closer and closer to the mirror until she focused her entire image. She pressed the edges of the polished mirror away from her as Neil emerged with a lens again. He held it out in front of the largest window to their left which extended upwards to the telescope. Madeleine ran her fingers through a piece of reddish pink light that shot by her seafoam green sleeves as if it were crystal and watched the light particles dance. She swirled around in the ball of light and then pressed her nose up against the window. Neil leaned up against the closet with his legs crossed at the ankles and his arms at the elbow.  
“Where are you from?” He asked Maddie with his hands in his pockets and his foot in his mouth.  
“Quoi?” She responded.  
“Where are you from? I, um, oh, man, I know this one. Où, yes, où! Où are you from?”  
“Nous sommes en Irlande,” she replied with eyes narrowing in confusion. He ran a hand through his wavy black hair and sighed.  
“Well, that does not matter anyway. What matters is that you are here.”  
“Je t’aime bien,” she announced with her beautiful brown eyes.  
He shrugged. “I-I have no idea what that means. I think it m-means ‘I like’ but after that it gets too complicated.”  
She smirked at his stutterings. “Je t’aime bien,” she repeated, but he just raised his eyebrows and turned to the closet. She stepped up behind him and caught his cheek in a kiss when he turned back around. Her lips were moist from the cool Irish air and what was no doubt an intensive beauty regimen for a girl of this caliber. Neil’s hand tingled at the touch, and he tried not to pull it away in shock too quickly. He nodded and took her hand to kiss it as she shifted her weight.  
“Ah, le baisement,” she whispered.  
He turned his head to show that he did not understand what she had just said, but she thought he was being coy so bid him farewell but stopped at the top of the stairs. “Do you want to dine with me?”  
“What?”  
“I’ll find you.” Madeline nodded and hiked up her skirts to swirl around the steps down to the exit as the Count opened the door to enjoy some peace and quiet without his son lagging around. He clapped Neil on the shoulder before mounting up the final set of stairs but stopped there with his fingers still lingering on his collarbone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You made it this far! I would really appreciate if you would leave a review or a comment and come back next week for part three! What is going to happen next?


	3. The Count and Neil

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As he continues to pine after the new French girl, Neil has a run in the Count that reminds him of his place in the estate. He argues with Adelaide over how much time he is spending with Madeleine but has to leave in a hurry to save his friend.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi everyone! Thanks for being here! It means a lot to me. If you can, please drop a comment down below and let me know what you think :)

The Count and Neil  
“Hello, sir.”  
“Oh, you have grown up well, Neil,” he complimented him, “you will make someone very happy someday. Well, I retract that. You will, for sure, but I seem to think you already have... You chose a good life path, young chap. You are doing well in the world. And how are you today? How are you finding our guests? No trouble, I hope?  
“Everything is fine, sir, thank you for asking.” Neil squared his shoulders under the firm grasp of the count, a wiry old man who mostly waltzed around in robes over his pajamas to distract from the fact that he had not brushed his gray hair or even bothered to assure that his glasses were straight over his eyes.  
“‘Fine’, well, what an indiscriminate word with little feeling or emotion. What a borish word that hides so many secrets.” With a mirror reflecting the look onto his pupil, the Count rubbed the muscle over Neil’s scapula and nodded with a clenched jaw. “Well, it looks like you have done a fine job here.” He skirted past him to grab a mirror that he positioned under the skylight where the noon sun shifted into view and lit up the tower. “You are released for the day. Good job, Neil.” The count replaced the mirror with an arthritic lunge in that direction and a sigh. “I really do hope everything turns out alright with you, dear Neil. I would hate for something... ill to befall any of my employees.”  
Neil muttered a thank you and scrambled down the stairs, slipping and catching himself as he stumbled backwards and cast a glance up towards the count beneath the oscillating telescope that swung on its axis as he touched its end with nimble fingers. Neil imagined his fingers gliding over Madeleine in that way but shook off the thought and ran out to the cabins. The warm morning wind raced through his hair as he streaked past the green and gold fields without a second thought for tree roots or escaping moles. Over the crest of the hill, the cabins appeared in tight little rows that spread out the closer you got to them. Characterized by a dying fire and broken heap of bottles outside, Neil found his usual stomping grounds, and he rounded the corner to the valley and, with his boots drifting in the shifty gravel, stopped short of running into Madeleine. She smiled at the near collision and asked him, “Where are you going?”  
“The Count said I could go, so I was just going to check on Adelaide. I would love to stay and talk, but--”  
“Well, I can come with you,” she suggested in French as she grabbed her bunch of skirts in one hand to protect the sea foam from the dust. She did not say a word as they descended the slope. He kicked open the door for her and then followed the French comtesse inside to where the younger boys were huddled around a bunch of marbles. Neil called Kevin in from outside and the boy sprinted at the prospect of seeing his uncle. Madeleine sat down on one of the chairs as Neil searched through the cabinets for food and looked back to Liam cuddled in Madeleine’s lap with the three-year old boy fondling her rings.  
Kevin ran in with mud splattered across his cheek from wrestling with the other boys, and Neil shook his head at his nephew’s rugged look. Madeleine turned her head away from watching Liam play with the rings to take in Kevin with his well-formed arms and legs. She slid Liam onto the table where Neil grabbed him from her delicate hands and hoisted him up on his shoulders to touch the eaved roof of their home as she took a step towards Kevin while licking her finger.  
“I’m Kevin,” he told her, ever the gentlemen. She smiled at him and ran her moist finger down his cheek where the mud revealed some blood. She gasped at the red spring that jumped forth and wiped her hands on a towel. Retreating backwards, Madeleine grabbed the edge of the table and braced herself, but Neil shook his head at her dramatics with a smirk‒Uptight, this princess‒and reassuringly patted her hand. His poor patient Kevin stood waiting, mouth open in embarrassment at shocking the beautiful girl and blood still winding down his face.  
Neil kneeled down in front of the teenager and wiped the dripping blood away before instructing Kevin to apply pressure. He grabbed the bucket of well water and splashed a bit on Kevin’s face. Again Madeleine shirked away from the surprise and scampered into the bedroom after Liam.  
Kevin sighed. “Uncle Neil, someday soon you’ll be able to leave this place. You can run away with the French girl! She is French, right? She was not speaking English...”  
The older man sighed and returned the bucket to its resting place. “I can hardly expect your parents to make such a sacrifice.”  
“But they want to, Uncle Neil. I am sure of it.” The boy gulped, pressing the towel even harder to his jawbone. He tossed the towel into the sink and smeared the dripping blood along the ridge of his skull as Neil glared at his knowledge. Dulled to a pale pink, the smear coated his cheeks in faint streaks that he began to pick at with his nails as the blood dried. Shaking his head at the mischievous boy, Neil turned his attention to his brother.  
Liam placed the edge of a ring on Neil’s nose, and Neil ruffled his black curls that matched his own. Madeleine had traipsed back outside where her delicate hands rested on the edge of the well. Neil admired her dazzling beauty: wavy hair falling in perfect crests and powdered cheeks with brown eyes. Kevin waited at the door with a finger tracing along the already-scabbing cut. He reached for her hand, and she shivered at the gritty touch of his palm.  
“Do you have any brothers or sisters?” Kevin asked as her fingers fell from her face. He sat down next to her as she turned towards the window sill and let her place her hand on top of his. Neil was sitting at the kitchen table with Liam eating when Adelaide swept in through the back door and picked him up in her arms. “Where is Kevin?” Neil gestured outside as Liam hung off of her arm and she sashayed over there. As she went to reach for the door handle, she told Neil that the Count wanted all of the male servants to report to him in an hour. “Oh, and why is she here?” she muttered in Neil’s ear in view of Madeleine as she swatted at Kevin to get him to let go of her.  
“She followed me here.”  
“She must‒”  
“No,” he said, “no, Ad,” with a shrug of his shoulders as Madeleine entered the room. “I don’t even know her name.”  
“Do you want to dine with me tonight?” she asked with her hands now around his.  
“Sure, Mad. Oh, désolée, Madeleine. Votre nom est Madeleine.”  
“You could teach me. I teach you, so you should do the same.”  
“Ah, you don’t understand. I am a servant. I am here to serve you. People pay me to entertain you and make sure that your stay here remains enjoyable no matter what happens.”  
“You can still teach me! That will entertain me.”  
“I will. I do not want to argue.”  
Adelaide tilted her head towards Madeline as if to assess her worthiness to be around her boys and clasped her hands in front of her waist and asked Madeline where she had come from in France. The poor girl only understood the French part, so she excused herself for her daily sieste. Adelaide watched the civilized girl go through her kitchen door.  
“Neil, please do not bring strangers into my house. Kevin, you can go and play outside.”  
“Mom, please do not be mad at Uncle Neil. She asked to come in, and she was very nice.”  
“Please, Adelaide, she meant no harm. She was just looking for somewhere to go. It gets so dull in that old mansion.”  
The woman sighed with a huff and a shrug of her shoulders. Kevin left with a shove from Neil as his uncle leaned in towards his mom with his elbows resting on his knees.  
“What is going on, Adelaide?”  
The blonde girl sighed again and craned her neck to see that Kevin went to play with his friends again. “James got into a fight with Oliver, and the count’s wife told me to get away because I was just complicating things.”  
“James’s in trouble?”  
“No, no, I think he’s‒well, he should be okay because she got involved. What am I going to do?” she reached out her hand to him.  
“Adelaide, I have to go. I have to help him. I have to…” Neil left her without a second thought and charged up the hill to vault over the balcony of the outdoor marble veranda, almost running right into the fight that was going on with fists flying at Oliver and his pretty, little face, but Oliver held his own as the older man gained on him. Neil rushed into the melee as his fellow servants stood there watching, guilty bystanders.  
“James, James, James!” He grabbed him by the shoulders and pulled him back with his feet planted apart, pinning Oliver down by the leg as he fell into the fight and slid under James who stopped punching right as he opened his eyes. The fighter collapsed in a sharp exhalation of breath, and Oliver slithered out of the pile. Neil placed his hands on James’ shoulders until he heaved himself off of his friend with shuddering breaths  
Oliver staggered away and wiped his brow with the back of his sleeve, cursing under his breath as his mother left to fetch one of the maids. The young viscount dragged his foot behind him but did not look back the grisly tableau. With blood streaks along the granite like an accidental canvas, James lay on his stomach with only his arms to keep him out of the pool of red. Neil rubbed a hand across his cheek and then dragged him away from the haphazard scene, spitting on his fingertips and moving to wipe away some blood right beneath the lower eyelid, but James swatted his hand away and marched back to the mansion. “Tell Adelaide that I am alright, Neil.”  
“James, you have bruises for sure and cuts that need to be cleaned unless you want to get infected.” He circled around him to assess the damage and wipe away more blood to get a clear view of all of the damage that had been done since Adelaide had left and the altercation had escalated.  
“Neil, do not touch me.”  
“Let me help you.” He held out a hand, but James rushed away up the opposite side of the stairs to the side entrance. Neil was just about to start another screaming match like last night when the count came out to the side of his mansion to start a screaming match of his own and send both of the men back to the cabin to fix up James. “Neil! Do not color my opinion of you so dastardly! Both of you, git! Clean yourselves up.  
James trudged along through the valley, dragging his feet through the grasses, and Neil followed at a fast clip to keep up and then overtake him to forewarn Adelaide. He came upon her sitting at the kitchen table with a sleepy Liam in her lap whose black curls wrapped around each of her fingers. She did not look up upon his arrival and barely responded to a kiss on the head, so he sat next to her and detached her hands from the small boy.  
“I am so sorry, Adelaide. It got out of hand, and...well...”  
Through her tears she whispered, “It was James versus Oliver, Neil. Who did you think was going to win?” At the mention of his name, James leaned against the door frame and moved once she turned around as the door frame creaked under the weight of his muscular body. Her hands flew to his face mapping out the cuts and bruises on his to match what she felt on her own face. In the rough hewn chair, Liam scrambled for a hold until Neil crouched down to grab his small doppelganger while his dad succumbed to his wife’s touch.  
“James, James, oh, James, are you alright?”  
“Of course I am alright. It was just Oliver, alright? It’s not as if he has ever tried to do anything serious to me.”  
“Why can’t you stand up for yourself?”  
“Is that what you want? For me to ‘stand up for myself’? And for us to be exiled?”  
“James…” Neil reprimanded him as he stormed into his bedroom and slammed the door, leaving Neil to comfort his wife with a kiss on the forehead. “You know that he is not thinking clearly. We know what you mean.”  
“Go to him, Neil. His face is so scarred and scratched. Work some magic.”  
He could not argue with this girl either. When he opened the unlocked door, James was facing the opposite wall with his back to him and shirt on the floor with hands roaming over his scratched torso. Neil grabbed him by the hip and turned him around. Scars criss-crossed down his sternum. “Can you fix this? Can you fix this mess?”  
“Well, there may be scarring, but you should be okay. Just let me…” He reached out a hand to wipe away the blood, but James placed his palm over his and removed it after a moment of hesitation that left Neil with a hitch in his breath that he only recovered once their hands lost contact.  
“Please leave me alone, Neil. Look what you have done.”  
“This is not my fault… just let me get you cleaned up.”  
“Fine.” James huffed but let him set to work as Neil found another towel from earlier that day, tracing his hands around his best friend’s body. James hitched his breath every time that Neil pressed too hard into his toned flesh, and then relaxed as he removed his hands to rinse off the rag in the water bucket, emitting groans of supposed pain every time one of the cuts reopened.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did you like it? What do you think will happen next to this gang of rebels? Tell me in the comments below!


	4. Neil and James

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Neil helps James recover from the fight and dine with Madeleine to get to know her better. Adelaide attempts to interrupt as her son gets involved, so Oliver takes it into his own hands.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for being here! It means a lot to me that you are here right now. Please let me know if you have any questions or comments.

“Here, let me get some alcohol,” Neil muttered, but James grabbed him by the chin and held him there to look him in his brilliant green eyes with his banal brown ones and thank him. Neil shook it off but did not drop his best friend’s gaze as he rustled in the cabinet for a bottle. He dropped the rag and wiped it in quick tides across James who winced at the initial pain and shuddered with every reapplication until Neil migrated to the southernmost cuts. His best friend latching onto his shoulder with his disproportionately large fingers that dug around his collarbone, he removed his hand after the last cleansing with a sharp exhalation of breath. Neil stashed the alcohol away and handed James a shirt that he had filched from their bedroom.  
“We have to g-g-go,” Neil stuttered with James buttoning the shirt with shaky hands, still wiping blood from his face. He threw on his jacket, and they meandered into the kitchen to accept their plates of food to serve out for dinner. Neil tried hard to catch a glimpse of Madeleine but finding her absent, he left out the side entrance. He refilled his flask with some fresh beer and sat on the edge of the outside balcony. She sprinted out when she spotted him there and held up a couple of plates.  
“Did you forget about our dinner plans, Neil?” He cupped her chin with his long drunk fingers and relished the way that his name sounded on her tongue. The breaths still came too fast or too slow to him as he felt the pulse of James’ skin under his and thought if all of the blood that they had washed away to the earth. The battered Irishmen branded such a lasting image on his mind that Neil started to see the outline of his face and the remnant of his cuts in the passing summer clouds. The bloody apparition blended in nicely with the deep sunset.  
“I like how you say my name.”  
“Quoi?”  
“Maddie, if you are going to stay here then you will have to learn English.”  
“Quoi?” She repeated with a hand on his arm over his awful white jacket. She gave him a peck on the cheek before she ran off again, and his outstretched hand could not stop her. Maddie came back with a full casserole dish with a bottle of wine wedged inside and a chicken in the middle. Neil smirked at her as the sunset truly started. That bloody face of his best friend still flashed in front of his eyes with a seize in his temples.  
“Maddie?” she asked.  
“Yes,” he replied. She pouted her top lip and then grabbed his hand as the sunset fell down over the horizon. The absence of light cast an even darker hue of red over the sky as the James’ in Neil’s head multiplied to create a full landscape of crimson swatches across the clouds.  
“C’est fini,” she murmured as it disappeared.  
“When are you going back?” Neil asked with hands wrapped around that bottle of wine, holding on for dear life.  
“Soon, I hope,” she murmured. “My mother sent me here,” she clarified with her fingers unwrapping his from around the wine bottle and pinching the cork with long manicured nails to pull it out. Neil marveled at her prowess with wide eyes in the ever-arriving darkness and chuckled as she took a swig large enough to fill a hip flask.  
“Mother never lets me have alcool,” she moaned as she passed him the bottle. “This wine is good. Not as good as French wine but still good enough to guzzle down. Go ahead; try it.”  
Neil grappled for the glass and a gentle prodding from her eyes set him to drinking before letting the bottle fall back into her pretty hands. Madeleine spread out her flowing skirts to show her knees as she shivered in the cold.  
She ran her tongue around the edge of the bottle to lick off the last few drops that he had left there in haste before downing another glass in one gulp. “Do you have cigarettes?” She inquired with delicate hands placing the bottle in between them. He let the wine rest there because he did not want to grant her access to this hidden part of his life where beer bottles might decorate his room and kept him banished from the de Lacy cottage some nights. “Are you going to drink anymore?” She giggled, the alcohol finally setting into her own nervous system.  
“I shan't,” he whispered back as a knock came on the inside window.  
“Run,” she squealed as someone opened the door in haste with panting gasps announcing their arrival. By the time the interloping couple laid claim to the small patio, Madeleine had grabbed Neil’s hand and dragged him down the hill to a patch of pine trees that hid them from view. Neil stood right next to her with their hands still intertwined, breathing heavy in the cold air from their recent sprint. With the wind and simultaneous winding down of the festivities, soon the only noises would be servants returning to their quarters after a long day’s work.  
Madeleine ran her free hand along the lapel of Neil’s white jacket, muttering about how it would be easier for people to see them out in the dark with him wearing that white coat. Maddie’s fingers slipped down the buttons to reveal the white shirt. “No, please, please,” he murmured, gracing each syllable of her name, “it is too cold for that.” He cast his eyes downward to stare at her little shoes that peeked out from under her dress as she shifted her weight while keeping both of her hands on his chest.  
“I can warm you,” she promised with tiny hands pressing into his back and those high cheekbones resting on his shoulder as they settled back into a sure position.  
Neil shook his head, rubbing against the top of her scalp while they remained interlocked like stepping stones. “You do not want to do those things with me. We have barely just met,” he reasoned, sliding his hand south to the sides of her thighs.  
“That matters not,” she whispered back to the wind that crossed the both of them at once. “Come with me to France. We can appease my mother and then leave to explore the world.”  
“I do not wish to embark on such a journey with anyone, not just you. Please do not think that to be a personal rejection.” He stroked her cheek, fitting the crook of his knuckle under her gaunt cheekbone. With his hand already resting on her cheek, she swooped in for a kiss, the shock of which sent him reeling back into a pine tree and leaning into the curve of her body. He rubbed his fingers over his lips to mask his dismissal as he felt her small body move against him. “We should foray back into the mansion. Do you know the way?”  
The girl sighed but admitted, “Oui, the mansion but not my room... Maybe you could take me there and deposit me at the threshold.”  
Neil shook his head with hands separating from hers. “I drank too much of that wine. I should return to my own quarters. I shall see you in the morning at breakfast, I hope.”  
“No, Neil, please. I do not want to be alone.”  
He grumbled, “You are such a lightweight. Maybe I should not have taken advantage of you...”  
“Au contraire,” she retorted, “I do believe it was me that took advantage of you.”  
“Good night, Madeleine. A demain.” He bowed to her and then sprinted off to the dark corners of the estate to find his quiet bunk bed as she scratched her manicured nails against the bark of a pine tree before sashaying her way back to the patio where a bewildered house maid led her back inside to the ballroom, now empty save for a few servant girls.  
“Faites de beaux reves,” she wished them all with a practiced wave of her hand as she ascended the stairs to her room where a handmaid quickly stripped her of the dress she had been wearing and darted out of the room to retire to her own chamber. The girl left before Madeleine vomited out of the window with her body floating freely in the wind and any remnants of the night’s hairstyle wisping away with every passing gale.  
Madeleine awoke in a strange room with a pounding in her head reminiscent of her mother sobbing at her father’s funeral.  
The handmaid knocked at the door which only increased the bass drum of her heartbeat as felt it in every lobe of her brain. She placed a carafe of tea on her bureau, and Madeleine groaned at the absence of her beloved coffee. “Good morning, mademoiselle,” she chimed as she opened the closet where all of Maddie’s dresses hung on velvet covered hangers. Madeleine closed her eyes to stop the sensory overload for just a moment before rubbing at her temples and muttering something about a green velvet dress. “Oh my, mademoiselle, how is that your nails are in such a state?” She slid her calloused hand over Madeleine’s dainty palms and raised an eyebrow in inquisition.  
“I do believe that I have already made an outdoor excursion of my own but please do not worry. That can be repaired later. No one else cares about my nails here, save you. It is not a problem.”  
The girl nodded with her eyebrows still all out of proportion. Madeleine slid into the velvet green desk and alighted at her bureau to let the girl brush her hair. The maid kept gasping for short breaths of air as if she was about to say something, but she always fell short and continued running the bleached horse hair brush through her charge’s hair until she could pull it all back into a tightly wound bun suitable for the day’s activities. They said goodbye to each other with a simple nod, and Madeleine tip-toed into the main atrium past the double doors and into the dining room there, still with a ringing in her head that made her steps shaky but nonetheless guided her down to the breakfast table. “Good morning, men,” she greeted the others as a servant pulled out her chair and she searched the room for Neil.  
Oliver the viscount appeared at the end of the other end of the table, hiding in the shadows of the dawn. Neil whispered in Madeleine's ear as he jumped in to set down a glass of milk, “How are you feeling?”  
“Well, other than this constant heartbeat in my mind, I feel good.”  
“Here, take these.” He slipped her two pill capsules. “Adelaide gives me them for my headaches.” And just like he had arrived, he was gone.  
“Good morning,” Oliver chimed with his palms pressed flat against the mahogany table with all of those soldiers starting down his neck. Madeleine caught his eye and rolled hers, and he chuckled at the challenge.  
She slipped the two pill capsules onto the back of her tongue and washed them down with the glass of milk. The servants came to another fresh cup of tea but Maddie turned up her nose at the English drink and excused herself, making Adelaide laugh in good humor at the end of the table and clear the teacup from her place. “Adelaide, where could I find Neil?”  
“Oh no, Madeleine... I... No, please…” Adelaide sighed with the hot tea in her hand warming its way through the teacup. “He knows not what he is doing. This is outside any conquest upon which he has ever before embarked.”  
“I am not a conquest,” Madeleine corrected her as she excused herself and followed the blonde servant to the kitchen door.  
“I believe that he ducked out early and went for a walk. If you go by our home you may find him there. But do watch yourself, ” she warned as Maddie skirted around along the edges of the room to avoid those soldiers and their gazes that cut like daggers. She slid past the patio that they had shared the night before and hiked up her skirts to sprint down to the bottom of the hill. Maddie walked along the dirt paths, taking off her high heels to carry them in her hand and keep a watchful eye out for the de Lacy cottage. “Maddie, Maddie, Maddie!” Kevin shouted from behind her in a field of flowers as she turned around at the sound of her anglicized name  
“Bonjour, Kevin.”  
“Um, sorry, what does that mean?”  
“Oh, my apologies, hello, Kevin.”  
“Could you teach me French?” he asked with head cocked to the side, his curls falling to the side.  
“If you want, but I am leaving soon,” she added to herself. “Have you seen Neil around here?” He nodded, taking a step closer to her. She wiped a brown dust off of his face.  
“These are for you, ” he whispered with curls shadowing the blush on his cheeks as he handed over the culled flowers.  
“Why thank you,” she murmured in reply, letting him lead her back to the house. “I will put them in my room as soon as I talk with Neil.”  
“Mmm… Could you show me your room? I have never been inside of the big house,” he confessed to her.  
“And you never will,” Neil snapped as he entered the home. “Hello again, Maddie. We will see you in due time, Kevin, until then I bid you goodbye.” The petit blond boy glared at his competitor for Maddie’s heart but sank down onto his bed and entertained himself with a game of cards.  
Neil grabbed her by the hand and led her to the edge of the groomed grass. “Are you feeling alright?”  
“How did you know to bring me those pills? Anyway... I believeI feel a bit better,” she murmured.  
“That’s good. Well, I gave them to you because you drank over a half of a bottle of wine, and seeing as though you had never drank more than a sip before there would have been no way that your body could have handled all of that alcohol.”  
“But how did you know that I had never drank before?”  
“Well, for one thing, you are younger and alcohol destroys a girl of your age.”  
“For a poor servant you know a lot.”  
“Who said I was poor? I have been working here for a long time. I could leave right now if I wanted to buy my own farm, but that would mean leaving Adelaide and James alone with the boys.”  
“So they will stop you from your dreams.”  
Neil laughed and ambled along in the grass. “You can stop acting like you know everything because you surely do not understand how our lives se fonctionne içi.”  
Madeleine scowled at him and started off into the middle distance to avoid his attempts to pull her back into the argument. “Please do not treat me like I am so much younger than you. Why did I even come out here?”  
“I wanted to ensure that you were in a healthy state.”  
“And?”  
“Well, there is also the question of last night.”  
“I am sorry, Neil, but I do not remember all of last night. I seem to have forgotten what surpassed. Well, at least the intimate details.” She tucked a lock of his jet black hair behind his ear and grazed his lips with hers.  
“We cannot see each other like this.”  
“I know…” She wandered away from him. “That is why I am returning to France. And while you may find some other girl after I leave to kiss you in the moonlight, but you will never find me again.” Her height made her upward scowl even more mean as she stood with her hands clasped in his and shifted her weight backwards to release herself from the grasp of this revolutionary.  
She picked up the flowers that Kevin had given her and nodded a farewell, only taking one step past him, waiting for him to stop her and stop her he did by turning around and grazing her upper arm with his fingers until she gave into his wishes and kissed him one last time before strolling back up to the castle and to her bedroom. She found a vase filled with dead flowers in the hallway next to her room and relieved it of its carcasses in order to water her newest gift. Oliver traipsed up the stairs, nodding at her. “How have you been finding our estate?”  
“It is quite nice.” She inclined her head and grasped at the fabric of her skirt, stammering, “I am sorry for your misfortunes. I understand completely the need to escape and see a different part of the world. I might have done the same myself.  
He chuckled and leaned against the banister, glancing both ways to make sure that no soldiers waited in the wings. “How old are you?”  
“Sixteen.”  
“I see.”  
“And you?”  
“Nineteen. I would have been married sooner. I had plans to marry a girl, and if I had not run away with her I would have been married off even sooner.  
“What happened?”  
Oliver sighed. “When we arrived in England we had no connections there. She found work as a servant, but I had no marketable skills other than my education, so any pay I got from teaching lessons was disportionate to anything she brought home. And then my father found us, well, rather his private search party found us. I suppose that if we had moved farther inland, we might have remained undercover.”  
“You should have found me in France, I would have kept you hidden.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What did you think? I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments! Thanks :) have a good day :)


	5. Madeleine et Oliver

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Viscount Oliver leads Madeleine into the forest where things don't go as planned...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for being here! I see you all :) Please leave a comment to let me know you're here.

Madeleine et Oliver  
“Merci mille fois.” He bowed and led Maddie to the stables as she hiked up her skirts to march down the hill. Maddie chose one of the stallions who had yet been castrated and gave Oliver a grin as he saddled up next to her.   
“Have you been riding before?”  
She only smirked in return.  
They circled around the property until they found the road out to the real world where Oliver led them along a lightly wooded path where native flowers of blue and purple colors overtook the trees to create an atmosphere more of an untilled field than a menacing forest. Maddie stuck to the side of the path, whispering, “Do you have a destination in mind?”  
“A general destination,” he intoned with a lilt on the end of each word to draw out the mystery. He led them out of a garden and into a field of grass that extended out to a rocky cliff. “Here we are, girl. Bienvenue au paradis.” Madde shifted her weight so that she could lie with her head on the opposite flank of the horse and breathe in the cool sea air.   
“From here I can see England,” she said as she spit out a glob of mucus she had hacked up after the short ride. Oliver chuckled at her antics as her horse trotted along a gravel path that curved against the edge of the cliff. Maddie spiraled around when her horse spun and let her hair float out around her. She strayed to explore just how far her horse would go before getting too close to the edge as the wind blew around them and her hair fell in her face.   
A sharp shot screaming through the air interrupted her reverie as her horse spooked and a sharp kick in its speed led it to the dark woods. A snake slithered up a tree and latched onto her horse's leg after springing itself from the bark with an uncanny defiance of gravity and digging in its teeth. Madeleine refrained from crying out as the serpent the size of a baby’s forearm wriggled its fangs into her horse even further. The large creature galloped further into the woods, ripping the snake from its flesh and leaving two deep striations from the bite. Madeline struggled to swing her leg over the back of the horse, but the animal bucked her off and speared her onto a tree instead. A branch cut through her leg, and she quivered at the edge of consciousness as the pain shot through her system. She looked away from the wound and crawled on top of her horse as she emerged from the woods with white knuckles gripping onto the reins, collapsing onto the neck of the horse as she caught a glimpse of a driftwood shard stabbed through her calf muscle with blood seeping out on either side. Then she saw nothing but emerald circles in front of her.  
When she awoke she saw the same green orbs hovering around her as Neil washed her face. Adelaide burst into sobs as the blood continued to flow and the severity of the situation set in for everyone helping her: Madeleine, Neil, James, and Adelaide. The latter kept repeating to Neil, “Why can’t you just take it out? Just take it out; put us out of our misery!”   
“If I do that, she will lapse into shock again,” he mumbled back as he slid arms under the petite French girl and watched James guide his wife out of the room. Neil bolted up the stairs as fast as he could, and Maddie grappled for his neck before he ripped her free as she laid her on her bed while keeping the damaged leg elevated with the goose down pillows. “Here drink this,” he handed her his flask and opened her throat to slide the cool liquid down her throat. “James,” she whispered.   
“James? James... James!” Neil started shouting as he remembered the calming power of cigarettes, but even as he stood at the balcony of the staircase his friend did not answer his calls, so he rushed back into her bedroom. Even though she was no friend to alcohol, it still did not affect her in the same way the wine had the other night as he had hoped, so he panicked in thinking of whatever other medications he could force down her throat. His eyes fell on the vase of poppies and struck them by the necks to shake the seeds free from the hold of the petals and collected each drop of opium in his palms. “Maddie, I need you to eat these,” he murmured as he pushed the bundle of seeds into her oral cavity and took a step back to remove himself from the crime as she sucked on the drug. “James!” He screamed at the balcony before turning down the stairs, commanding a bottle of vodka. One of the servants threw him a flask and someone rushed down and up from the kitchen in order to fetch him the alcohol, thrown across the ballroom with all the strength of Thor. The count met him at the door to the bedroom and barred his entrance: “Stop administering substances to this girl!You are going to seriously injure her.”   
“Step aside, sir,” Neil commanded. “I have lived long enough to know how to handle a case such as hers. Now move before the alcohol starts to wear off. I need to get into her room.”  
“Stop this!” He shouted, “I do not give you permission to drug this girl senseless. This could destroy our reputation if a terrible incident were to befall her.”   
“A terrible incident has already befallen her,” Neil screamed before he jabbed the count in the abdomen and leapt over his collapsing form so as to administer the vodka. He opened the flask and dripped what remained down her throat before he opened the bottle as he waited for her to lick her lips or show another sign of life. “Please say something. Anything.” But she did not respond because even her faculty of speech was lost at this point. She lay splain with her arms grasping behind her at the sheets, currently soaked through with blood. Neil cracked open the bottle and tilted it back into her throat. She muttered over and over again, “Neil, Neil, Neil,” until he kissed her lips closed. He did not even feel the soft embrace of her kiss. Neil did not feel much of anything anymore. He banished the thought and covered her eyes with a strip of fabric he ripped from the petticoats under the dress.  
“Madeleine, if you can still understand me, then know I do not wish to hurt you.”  
She cried salty tears as her mind sorted through all of the adrenaline, and he adjusted her leg so that the pillows framed the wound and then secured either side of her leg with his own knees. He bit his lip in prayer as he settled each of his hands around the offensive new growth and buckled down for the scream.  
“I am saving you,” he promised her; he dug his nail into the side of the wood and locked his eyes onto the site of the wound and pulled back with strength seizing up his entire body until he freed the branch and staggered backwards. The shock of victory deafened him to her screams that followed, starting when he dislodged the wood. He stroked her face with his fingers resting over each of her pores as she shuddered with sobs and hit at him with weak fists. He restrained her hands and pinned down her legs with his knees. At the sound of a door clicking open, the count sprang into the room with James restraining the royal from attacking his best friend. The count fought with the two Irish men as they pinned him against the wall and then shoved him in a closet as he struggled to get at the girl. Kevin ran into the room with a stack of bandages and water which Neil snatched up to splash over the wound that still gushed blood as Madeleine writhed in pain. The small boy lay a fresh towel over the hole and reached for the bottle of vodka, but James stopped him, handling the stolen alcohol. Adelaide rushed up and passed off a clear bottle to her eldest son as he pressed a towel to the wound and laid his own body over her leg with hailstorm tears dripping from his eyes. Madeline stopped her convulsions as Neil pressed their palms together and kissed the tops of her hands while the band of friends huddled together at the side of her bed. The count banged on the closet door, and the next servant to arrive carted him out of the room as he struggled to acclimate himself. His wife wept at the top of the stairs, too afraid to venture into the room. Upon seeing the women he loved in such distress, the count knelt down at her side and guided her back to their tower.   
Neil left the bedside with the others who let their eldest son stay with his torso plastered over her to staunch the bleeding. “I’ve had enough… IーIー” He staggered away from the bloody scene and towards the light of the doorway.  
“Neil, please stay,” Adelaide pleaded.  
“No!” Neil whirled out of the room and down the nearby stairs with James pursuing him while also calling for Adelaide to get Madeleine out of the awful dress. “Wait, Neil!” He shouted after him as his friend shook his way past the ballroom floor and ran out to the balcony where he leapt over the railing and collapsed on his knees in the grass with his hands shaking. James hurried to his aid and shoved a lit cigarette between his fingers, grasping them to bring the lit cig to his lips and demonstrating how to breathe in deeply.  
“Calm down, love,” James murmured with his fingers taking the cigarette from Neil who shook with every smoky breath. James placed a hand along the curve of his spinal cord and lowered him to the ground.  
“James,” Neil moaned as he ducked his face into the crook of his shoulder. He welcomed the contact and continued to smoke. Vulnerable, Neil offered his hands up to James for him to pick out the minuscule splinters. The men sat with crossed legs as Neil buried his face in his own shoulder to disguise the pain and forget about what was sending short sparks up the nerve ending in his arm as James poked and prodded at his flesh. He pulled the last invader from Neil’s hand and kissed both of his palms. “Thank you. Do you have another cigarette?” James offered him another one.   
Neil handed off the cigarette to James after taking a drag and nodded off. James forgot what hour it was as the clouds rolled through, blinding him for instants as he watched their majesty conquer the estate. The count waited in his tower of mirrors, angling them to catch the lightning that darted past the windows during the storm. Adelaide found her husband and their best friend sleeping on the green and gently awakened James enough to carry Neil back to his own room. He obliged and picked up the boy and carted him back to his sleeping roommate where he deposited Neil in the top bunk and watched him sleep before locking his heel onto the edge of a lower bunk and leaning over the younger man, pressing their lips together for a split moment and brushing a lock of his hair behind his ears. “Good night.”   
Adelaide sang a lullaby to her younger son in a soft tone so as not to disrupt Kevin who passed out in their bed after having sat at Madeleine’s side for hours. James lied that he wished to eat dinner and hightailed it back to the mansion where he encountered the count quitting his own tower. “Oh, James!” He exclaimed with a finger pointing to the sky, “Have you noticed the storm?”   
“Yes, sir,” James told him with a bowed head.   
“I know you love them, do you not?”   
“I do, sir. Thank you for remembering.”   
“Of course, of course,” he muttered before swirling his cape and prancing off, probably drunk off of some illegal liquor and the shock that remained after the terrible incident of the day. James two-timed the steps as he ran from all the bullshit that surrounded him. As he leveled the second set of stairs, Oliver came out of one of the closets and nodded his head at him. “Hello.”   
“Oliver,” James replied with arms crossed  
Oliver held up his hands in surrender and approached the other man with calculated steps. “I know we have had our disagreements in the past but please forget any of that. I want─Wait.” He stopped to finger the collar of James' shirt. “Why are you all wet?”   
“I was out in the rain and fell asleep outside.”   
“I see. It was a long day. Here, let me help you.” He lightly fingered the buttons he found there as the two men stood facing each other. “I never meant to harm Adelaide or you it was simply a lapse in judgment.”   
“If you would please remove your hands... I am completely capable of undressing myself.” He placed his large hands over the small, oiled palms of Oliver and pushed them away from himself.   
“I understand your sentiment, de Lacy,” Oliver snarled with his arms crossed to mirror the other man. James cringed at the tone of his voice and turned around to a display of flat mirrors reflecting the scene one hundred times over. He shuffled his feet, making the mirrors shake in their stands enough to make his father have a slight conniption. “Why did you come up here?”  
“I would ask you the same question,” James replied with a stoic gaze back at the younger man.  
“I asked first,” Oliver taunted.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What did you think? Where do you think the story is going next? See you next week!


	6. James and Oliver

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The families deal with the aftermath of the fire, both physically and emotionally.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> New chapter! New chapter! Let me know what you think in the comments.

James and Oliver  
“Fair enough.” James deigned to fulfill his command and looked him square in the eyes, their brown irises locking onto one another. “I have been dealing with quite an exorbitant amount of drama with my family and friends. I knew that they were not planning to be in this vicinity at such an hour, and so I sought out this solitude. Now would you indulge me by explaining why you ventured into your father’s sanctum?”  
“I am responsible for what happened today.” Oliver took a step closer and inclined his head, looking directly at James' collarbone that ran lightly under his gossamer skin. “I assure you that anything I do now is not on a whim.” James bowed his head to rest his chin against Oliver's temple and let the younger men press his lips to his.  
The young boy did not really know what he was getting himself into when he kissed a de Lacy. He slid his free hand to Oliver's waistline and ripped off a scrap of his bloodied shirt with his teeth and fastened it over the eyes of his helpless victim as he placed him on the ground. James lowered his head to the elevation of the face of the other and growled in his ear, “Are you comfortable?” Oliver gulped and nodded his head as much as possible against the marble floor. “Do you want this?” James inquired with his tongue darting out against the boy’s ear. Oliver swallowed again to clear his throat as the older man continued back to his waistline. James slid two palms under Oliver’s hips and slid his trousers off past his ankles. He pulled off his undergarments of the boy with his teeth and watched him shiver at the touchless sensation of being undressed in such a fashion. He circled around to Oliver’s chest and unbuttoned his shirt. He kissed him as he did this and relished the confusion on the boy’s face. James reached down and ran a finger along his inner thighs until they met in the middle and Oliver shook with the slight shock. James restrained a laugh. It was all textbook to him; at this point the only surprises were only ever minor deviances in the plan. Oliver started to gyrate against his hand, but James pulled it away as he stopped to remove his own pants and knelt back onto the boy so that Oliver could feel his presence. He destroyed the expectations of the boy as he advanced over his body and teased his mouth open with his fingers. Oliver let his tongue dart out as he relaxed his jaw and changed his expectations to mirror what James had in store.  
“First it is my turn,” James groaned with his body doubled over so that he curved around himself and could whisper into the boy’s ear. Oliver dared not nod and break the concentration that he had built. James planted sweet nips along the inner part of his forearm and let himself hover on the edge. He had been through this dance enough times to know how to control himself.  
Oliver started gasping for air and James climbed off of him. “Oh God...” 

Madeleine awoke with little recollection of what had happened the day before. She lifted a towel from off of her leg and then it all came crashing back down to reality as she burst into tears. She shook violently with sobs, and a handmaid rushed into the room. Unfortunately the poor girl balked at the sight of the open wound and ran screaming from the chamber. Neil, who had been polishing a table for breakfast that morning, sprinted up the stairs once he saw from whence the girl left. Madeleine continued crying without the sound of sobbing, and Neil threw the blanket over her legs and wrapped an arm around her shoulders to encapsulate her writhing body with his own. “What happened? What happened?”   
“Oh, Madeleine, please,” he pleaded.   
“Look what happens to me! I come to Ireland and this! Whose idea was it to go out riding?”   
“You know,” he whispered in her ear with his legs spreading out around her and kissing the outer edges of her ear canal.   
“If I had never left France, none of this would have ever happened.”   
“Then you would have never met me.”  
“And how have you helped me?” She narrowed her eyes at the bridge of his nose as he broke his focus and recoiled from her accusation. “Now let me take the towel off of my leg.” She elbowed him in the side abdomen and wheeled away to the edge of the bed, flinging the towel off in the process. “Just look at that and tell me that something good has come from any of this. And do not lie to me!” Neil reached for her leg to cup it in his hands, but she jerked herself away and simply laid it out to her side for the both of them to observe. The outer edges had started to scab over, but the inner workings remained raw in the middle with flakes of blood speckling the whole work of art. She ran a finger down the side of the lunar eclipse forming on her leg and let him kiss away the dried blood she found there. She turned her leg over to see the mirrored edge on the other side and pinched the remaining skin between the sun and the moon on her leg. It played into her fingers like water in a stream after a storm with parting skies. She put weight on the injured leg and pretended to not notice his surprise at her ability to pressure the fresh wound in such a manner. “It only touched the muscle,” she reasoned with him. “The bone was not affected, luckily. The wood would not have been strong enough to affect the bone.”  
“I know,” Neil replied, “I should have thought of that… How do you know about human anatomy? I highly doubt that they taught you anything of the like in finishing school.”   
Madeleine sighed. “I highly doubt they taught you anything of the like in your old school.”  
“How do you know about that?”  
“People talk.”   
“Have you been going around to Adelaide and James? They talk too much.”   
Madeline took a step away from the bed but held onto the comforter. “I need to get outside.” Neil shook his head at her and left the room. “Deal with your own illness, Neil,” Madeleine whined as he left her clinging onto the bed.   
On the other side of the threshold, Adelaide shook her head at him with her wavy curls teased up and swinging back and forth in perfect time. “You cannot just leave this girl like that. She was in a terrible accident yesterday, and she is still recovering.”  
“This is not just about Madeline, is it?”  
“I’m sorry; it’s just that James did not come home until late last night and his shirt was all ripped up and still bloodied from the incident, but I know that he was fooling around. I just... I should go help the French princess.”  
Neil muttered a goodbye and slid down the banister to the dining room to finish polishing the table. Not even a comment about his best friend cheating on his wife could rattle him now. Farther into the mansion, a disembodied hand lent Oliver a cigarette and he took a drag before passing it back and then strolling down the hallway. Neil shook his head at these antics and only saw the benefactor when he finished with the tables and took a stack of plates from one of his roommates and started sliding each of them out into place. The other servants laughed at his usual tomfoolery, but he sobered up when Adelaide came out of Madeleine’s room with that bloodied towel in her hands.   
Neil followed her out to the pump in the back of the estate and started to wash off the towel. “That poor girl... I was able to find some bandages amidst all of the confusion. They should stop the bleeding, but I will have to replace them soon.” Adelaide finished filling a bucket full of water. Neil took it from her hands and walked with her back to the boys to pour it into their sink so that they boys could wash up once they got done playing. She leaned against the stone basin and clasped her hands together. Neil grabbed them, but she shook her head and strutted outside. She settled Liam down into the dirt and leaned against the side of her small house with her hands cleansing her face. “You need to leave.”  
“We could,” Neil murmured to her as he came back. “I have enough money for two people. I have been saving for a third, but─”   
“I wish we were not in public,” Adelaide moaned as a rush of servants waved out of the kitchen and dining area after the breakfast service.   
“In the afternoon, when James returns, you might feel differently,” Neil assured her as he strutted off back to the mansion to tend to whatever work waited for him there. Oliver pulled him aside as he mounted the stairs. “I need you to clean up in the tower. There seems to have been some damage done after the storm last night. Mirrors out of place, angled wrong, smudged, you know, the like. Thank you.”  
“No, thank you,” he groaned back at Oliver.   
“Are you alright?”   
“Am I ever?”   
Oliver shrugged.   
“I’m all shook up by what happened yesterday afternoon.”   
“Of course, of course, I am too,” Oliver agreed with his hands in his pockets and his eyes lidded from lack of sleep. “If you need anything, holler down to me.”  
“Thanks. I’ll be seeing you around I suppose.”   
The older boy shrugged. He ran into James as he passed by him to get a hit off his cigarette again.   
The man fell back against the ridges in the mahogany paneling that flanked each wall and dragged a blood-crusted nail along the edge of the crown moulding. “Do you need something harder?” James asked him as he retracted his hand and snuffed out the cigarette on the bottom of his shoe. You’ve been sucking them down like candy.”   
“No, no, it’s fine. Just trying to get through the day.” Oliver pushed past him to the window in the vacated room they occupied. He stumbled back into a freestanding bookshelf and steadied himself on the ornate globe that spun from the force of gravity next to the window. “My father will be furious.”   
“Oh, come on, it’s only a few cigs,” James urged him, reaching for his hand after pocketing the snuffed out cigarette.   
Oliver lingered in his present state for a moment before getting pulled back into James but then pulled away again to exit the room again, turning back to tell James to go clean up in the mirror room. James groaned at the prospect of returning to the tower but mounted the stairs to be free of all the drama below.   
“Hey!” Neil called out from a floor above once he started up the spiral staircase. “How are you doing today? So far all I’ve seen of you is your hand as you give out cigarettes to Oliver.” Neil raised his eyebrows and folded his arms over his chest after replacing one of the mirrors in its stand. James ignored the question and said, “You seem awfully chipper today. What? Did you get laid last night? Sneak out after Adelaide brought you back to your room?”   
“That was Adelaide who brought me back?”  
“Yes, who else would it have been?”   
“Um, I thought it was you,” he cast his glance to the side as both of the men blushed. James ran his hands along the banister and set to work alongside Neil, brushing shoulders with him as they cleaned mirrors.   
“Did you hear the shouting downstairs this morning?”   
“A little but there seems to be constant shouting around here.”   
“Because of Madeleine.”  
“Oh, please do not. She will be leaving soon.”  
“‘Pologies. How is she doing?”  
“She can walk, so that will not be a problem.”  
“As a friend I do wish that you come out of this unscathed, and that she does, too. I know that you have had your love affairs since you have been here, and I respect your choices, but you have to keep in mind that this is a different situation.”   
Neil laughed at him to blanket his anxiety and chucked his friend on the shoulder. “Look at you, watching out for me! Some things never change, do they?”  
“Never,” he promised.   
“Except, as I was telling Adelaide earlier this morning, I am close to saving enough to get all of us out of here.”   
“No, you cannot be serious. Neither her nor I expect you to help us out of this debt.”  
“Come off it. I know that you two struggle with your wages, trying to feed the boys and plan for their future but forget that for a minute. Once I get us out of here, you will not have to pay so much to support them. If we can get out of here we can grow our own food on a farm and live out in the country where we will never have to worry about these high class aristocrats, running around, making people do petty, meaningless work for them. Do you seriously want your children to grow up here? I certainly would not.”

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed this first chapter! Please let me know what you thought. Have a great day!


End file.
